Nigerian media coverage of medical progress on the development of COVID-19 vaccine

ABSTRACT

There is a global shift in discource on issues related to COVID-19 with greater attention paid to the vaccine. COVID-19. Despite this, the literature on media coverage of COVID-19 is yet to be extended to media coverage of issues related to medical progress on a vaccine for the virus. The objective of the current study was to fill this gap by examining how Nigerian media report COVID-19 vaccine development In doing so, attention was paid to the frequency of coverage, sources of stories as well as story type used. Two newspapers and TV stations were sampled for the current study. The current study made use of content analysis with a code sheet as the instrument for data collection. The result of the current study revealed that only 23% of the media stories on COVID-19 were related to vaccine development. Additionally, most of the stories made use of official sources as well as straight news. Comparatively, newspapers covered more in vaccine development than TV. The implications of these results on medical communication and theory are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Coverage
• COVID-19
• newspaper
• TV
• vaccine
• cure
• treatment
• Nigeria

Introduction

COVID-19 is one of the public health emergencies currently confronting the world. It has posed a serious challenge to the global community and disrupted different activities like sporting events, workshops, commerce, politics, entertainment, among others. The virus has disrupted international movements because airports have been shutdown and borders of countries closed. People’s lives and livelihood have been severely affected. COVID-19 is the world’s major public health emergency’ Even countries with sophisticated health care systems like the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany, among others have faced the impact of COVID-19.¹Corroborate that COVID-19 has shocked the global community and compelled people to effect changes in their lifestyles.

“SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, spreads through contacts with infected objects or with exhaled droplets in the breath of an infected person COVID-19 also spreads through a droplet of an infected person when they cough. This means that the virus does not travel long distances but when infected persons travel, they spread it to other places. COVID-19 has a mortality rate for diagnosed cases that ranges from low to moderate (estimated 1–5%.² Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been authorized for widespread use in several countries, including initially in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore, and provide.³ It is partly because of the nature of COVID-19 and how it is contracted that the⁴ has recommended health behavior like regular hand washing, physical distancing, use of facemask, use of alcohol-based hand sanitizers, and staying at home. Although such health behavior has been recommended, there appears to still be an exponential increase in confirmed cases of COVID-19. It is reported that tens of millions of subjects have been confirmed as infected with over one million dead from COVID-19 disease.⁵ The increasing number of cases despite the preventive measures put in place is suggestive of the fact a vaccine is required to combat the spread of the virus.

There is anxiety among the general public on when a COVID-19 vaccine−19 ‘will become widely available for mass vaccination.’ Efforts are ongoing regarding the development of vaccines that will be used to prevent the spread of the virus. Media report of such efforts is important because it will contribute to educating the general public with the possibility of influencing their behavior. However, even though studies^6–11 have been conducted on different aspects of COVID-19 among Nigerian scholars, the literature on media coverage of issues related to the development of a vaccine for the virus is scanty hence the need for the current study.

Study objectives

The general objective of the current study was to determine how the media in Nigeria report issues related to cure for COVID-19. The specific objectives were to:

1. Ascertain the frequency of media stories on issues related to the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

2. Ascertain the sources of media stories related to issues on COVID-19 vaccine development.

3. Ascertain the story format for issues related to developing a COVID-19 vaccine.

Literature review

Issues on COVID-19 vaccine

The challenges of developing a COVID-19 vaccine have given rise to different issues. There have been claims and counter claims from different people and groups regarding a vaccine for COVID-19. A story with the title: ‘’Coronavirus Vaccine: When will we have one” in which it explains that a vaccine is needed to effectively combat COVID-19 because it will train the immune systems of humans to resist the virus.¹² It is added that progress has been made regarding developing a vaccine for the virus because about 140 vaccines are been developed and they are in their early stage of trials. Among the many vaccines, the one developed by Oxford University is found to propel an immune response.¹²

Media coverage of medical progress on a COVID-19 vaccine is essential because it may play a role in deciding if people will take a vaccine or not. Ale (2020) corroborates that accuracy of information about COVID-19 is an important requirement toward combating its spread. Efforts at developing a COVID-19 vaccine have led to competition among scientists and countries. A story with the title: “Search for Coronavirus Vaccine Becomes a Global Competition” wherein it chronicles the completion among countries regarding who first develops a vaccine.¹³ Part of the story notes:

In the three months since the virus began its deadly spread, China, Europe and the United States have all set off at a sprint to become the first to produce a vaccine. But while there is cooperation on many levels — including among companies that are ordinarily fierce competitors — hanging over the effort is the shadow of a nationalistic approach that could give the winner the chance to favor its own population and potentially gain the upper hand in dealing with the economic and geostrategic fallout from the crisis¹³

The submission above paints a picture of the realities of the competition which has been ongoing among countries vis-à-vis the development of a vaccine for COVID-19. The media can play essential roles in providing accurate and timely information to the general public on issues related to the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Empirical evidence

The outbreak of COVID-19 has been greeted with many studies (e.g. ^14–16). For example a study examined media coverage of COVID-19. The researchers divided their study into two parts – before the outbreak of the virus in Nigeria and after confirmed cases were reported in Nigeria. They found that before the virus was confirmed in Nigeria, there were fewer stories about it in Nigerian media but as Nigeria recorded a confirmed case, stories about the virus increased more than three times. Additionally, their study reported that the media gave more prominence to the issue only after cases of the virus were confirmed in Nigeria.¹⁷ Another study examined Nigerian media coverage of COVID-19 and found that there were less frequency, less prominence, and volume of stories on COVID-19 compared to other issues reported in the media.¹⁸ Another study examined how Nigerian media report issues related to the COVID-19 vaccine with particular attention to contributions from African countries. It was found that the media gave preferential attention to scientists from other countries when compared to their counterparts from Africa.¹⁹

A study was conducted to examine how the media report health issues in the Netherlands and found that the manner in which the media report health issues are not the same because it differs based on the media genre. Specifically, their result showed that newspapers give more attention to health stories than do TV and magazine.²⁰ It should be noted that media genre describes the type of media based on its content offerings. Examples include television, radio, newspapers, and magazine. Also,²¹conducted a study and reported that the effect which media messages have on mass media audience equally differs with relation to the characteristics of media outfit. Accordingly, they found that reading newspapers leads to a more positive opinion while TV broadcast viewing leads to a negative impact. The studies^20,21 paid attention to the issue of media coverage of health issues, vaccine development was not captured in their studies. Nonetheless, they have provided useful information regarding the role of the media in communicating health messages to the general public.

Theoretical framework

The current study made use of the social responsibility theory and the agenda-setting theory. The social responsibility theory originated from the Hutchins’ Commission of 1947.The core assumption of the theory is that the media have an obligation to conduct its activities in manners that are beneficial to the society.²² The theory holds that freedom to practice journalism comes with an obligation for journalists to practice responsibly.²³ When viewed broadly, the social responsibility theory makes a case for the media to make efforts and support initiatives that will make the society a better place. It also means that the media have a responsibility to champion the process of suggesting solutions to raging problems affecting the society. Within the context of the current study, media in Nigeria have a social responsibility of supporting any efforts aimed at providing solutions to the problem of COVID-19. One of the ways through which the media can achieve this is through agenda setting. This is otherwise expressed as agenda-setting theory.

Agenda-setting theory was conceived by Walter Lippmann in a book which was captioned Public Opinion published in 1922. Lippmann opined that the content of news media has a substantial impact concerning the picture which people have related to issues reported in the media. Although the argument of Lippmann was not presented in a theoretical manner he is often acknowledged as providing a background for the eventual postulation of agenda-setting theory. The theory was propounded in 1972 by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw after their study at Chapel Hill, United States of America. After examining 100 undecided voters, McCombs and Shaw concluded that when news editors exercise their gatekeeping function such as deciding what to include in media contents, they are actually playing a critical role in shaping public views about issues. The argument which this theory advances is that the media play an essential role in influencing how people think about an issue,^24,25 a study which he conducted in Nigeria reported that indeed the media play a fundamental role in setting public agenda. Within the context of the current study, the media can set agenda on the need for studies to continue to search for COVID-19 or regarding progress made in search of a vaccine for the virus.²⁶ The media can make use of its contents to make the issue of COVID-19 development important through the frequency of reportage, selecting story formats that provide details about the issue as well as a variety of story sources on the issue.

Methodology

Quantitative content analysis was used to carry out the current study.The choice of content analysis was because it is normally considered as the most appropriate design if a study seeks to investigate the manifest contents of media reports. Therefore, the current study aimed to examine how the media in Nigeria reported issues related to the development of a vaccine for COVID-19.

The sample size for the current study was made up of two newspapers and two television stations. The newspapers which were sampled for the current study are Nation and Vanguard newspapers. On the other hand, the TV stations which were sampled for the current study included Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and African Independence Television (AIT). The essence of combining both electronic and print media was to make comparison across media. The duration of the current study was 1 December 2019 to 30 June 2020. This duration was suitable for the current study because it represents the time when the virus broke out. As soon as the virus was reported in China, the searcher for vaccine commenced immediately.

Story sampling strategy

To sample the stories for the current study, the current study adopted the stratify sampling strategy to categorize the media into print and broadcast. The next step was taken by utilizing simple random sampling to select the media from each of the strata. Consequently, for print media, Nation and Vanguard newspapers were selected. For broadcast media, NTA and AIT were sampled. Additionally, the next step was taken to sample the stories for analysis. Therefore, the motif sampling strategy was used to select the stories that were examined. This was achieved by searching the website of the media selected with the utilization of keywords such as ‘COVID-19 cure,’ ‘COVID-19 vaccine,’ ‘Coronavirus treatment,’ ‘Vaccine development,’ ‘search for COVID-19 vaccine,’ ‘COVID-19 vaccine trial.’ After the search generated results, a purposive sampling technique was used to select stories that were related to the issue of investigation. The stories were screened by going through them to ensure that they were related to the subject of interest.

Variables measured in the current study

The current study measured the following.

Frequency of coverage

The frequency of coverage was used to determine the number of times that stories on the COVID-19 vaccine were reported.

Sources of stories

The focus here was to determine persons that were cited in media stories on the COVID-19 vaccine. The current study then categorized sources into two. They are official and non-official sources. Sources were considered as official if they were from people in government or corporate entities. Sources from persons who spoke in their personal capacity were regarded as non-official sources.

Story format

The objective here was to ascertain the format through Nigerian media reported stories related to vaccine for COVID-19. Consequently, the current study utilized straight news in reference to stories that reported issues without providing deeper details. On the other hand, feature stories were those that provided deeper details on the subject of investigation. Finally, opinion stories report the views of individuals about the issue.

Newspaper articles and TV stories constituted the unit of analysis for the current study. The instrument of data collection was a code sheet that was developed for the current study. Three experts validated the code sheet. The intercoder reliability of the cod sheet was ascertained by allowing two coders to code 20% of the stories. The current study made use of Krippendorff’s Alpha (KALPHA) to measure the inter-coder reliability utilizing the 22 version of the statistical package for social sciences. The outcome of the analysis revealed the inter-coder reliability of 0.92 for story frequency, .72 for story type, .77 for issues, respectively.

Statistical analyses

The result for the current study was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The descriptive statistics used included simple percentages, mean and standard deviation. On the other hand, the inferential statistics used included multiple regression analysis, two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) as well as z-test.

Results

A search was carried out on the websites of the media selected for the current study. The search results generated a total of 870 stories were related to COVID-19. The search results were further screened by further going through them to ensure that they could be used to achieve the current study objectives. Among the 870 stories, it was discovered that only ‘202 (23%) stories were related to the vaccine for the virus. This represents 23%. What this means is that fewer than a quarter of the stories paid attention to issues related to the vaccine of the virus. In table one below, a multiple regression analysis was done to ascertain if media genre predicts the frequency of coverage.

The objective of Table 1 to ascertain if media genre predicts the frequency of media coverage of issues related to finding treatment for COVID-19. The analysis from the table showed all the four media options examined significantly predict the frequency of the coverage of vaccine development for COVID-19. The outcome of the current study further showed that the nation predicted the frequency of coverage more (β = .509). The analysis implies that media genre significantly predicts coverage of vaccine for COVID-19 with newspapers having a higher frequency than TV. To further ascertain the sources of stories on a vaccine for COVID-19 table two below were computed:

Table 1. Regression analysis of e media genre as predictors of frequency of the coverage of progress on a COVID-19 vaccine

Suggestion	Constant	β value	R square	F. value	P. value
Nation	3.530	.509	.427	10.203	.002
Vanguard		.502			.001
Channels		. 401			.002
AIT		.320			.002

In Table 2 above, an ANOVA was conducted to determine the impact of media genre on sources of stories related to a vaccine for COVID-19. The media evaluated were: Nation newspaper, Vanguard, NTA, and AIT. The outcome of the analysis revealed that an interactive effect for the two newspapers examined genre, and the sources of stories were not significant, F (2,132) = 1.22, p = .06. The result showed a statistically significant main effect for the newspapers and TV involved, F (2,230) = 3.95, p = .03. Further analysis as revealed by the Post-hoc comparisons utilizing the Turkey HSD test showed that the mean score for official sources (M = 20.31, SD = .24) was significantly higher than for non-official sources (M = 14.76 SD = .22). The implication of this is that sources of stories differed based on the media genre and that there was the dominance of official sources. Table 3, showed the story type used in reporting issues related to the vaccine development for COVID-19.

Table 2. A two-way ANOVA analysis of the sources of stories on medical progress on a COVID-19 vaccine

Sources media	Mean	SD	p value	Decision
Official Nation	21.24	.20	.01	Sig
Vanguard	24.45	.24
NTA	18.34	.21
AIT	17.21	.32
Total	20.31	.24
Nonofficial Nation	16.12	.31	.02	Sig
Vanguard	13.41	.32
NTA	14.33	.32
AIT	15.21	.14
Total	14.76	.22

Table 3. Z-test analysis of mean scores of TV and newspaper story type on coverage of issues related to a COVID-19 vaccine

Grouping	Media genre	Straight news	Feature	Opinion	Z-cal	Df	Z-crit	Decision
TV	AIT	22.4	11.2	10.64	3.4	12	1.96	Sig
	NTA	22.2	11.2	10.91
	Total	22.6	11.4	10.77
Newspaper	Nation	27.12	2.0	12.1
	Vanguard	26.33	1.7	13.9
	Total	26.73	1.85	13.0

Table 3 was computed to evaluate if the media examined differed in their story type used in reporting issues related to vaccine development for COVID-19. The result showed that the calculated z-value (3.4) is more than the critical z-value (1.96) at 12 degrees of freedom (df) and 0.05 confidence level. The implication is that the media investigated differed in their story type used in reporting issues related to the vaccine development for COVID-19.

Discussion

The continuous increase in the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 points to the fact that only a vaccine can provide a permanent solution to the public health emergency and return the global economy. World leaders and scientists recognize this fact; hence, the search for a vaccine for COVID-19 has generated interest globally. The essence of the current study was to investigate how the media report issues related to vaccine development for COVID-19 with particular attention to the frequency of coverage, sources of stories as well as story format. The result of the current study revealed that only 23% of the stories on COVID-19 were related to vaccine development for the virus. This means that there was a low frequency of the coverage of issues related to a COVID-19 vaccine among the media examined. Additionally, the result of the current study revealed that the sources of stories on a vaccine for COVID-19 were mostly from official persons, thus paying less addition to non-official sources. Relying mainly on official sources gives little or no room for a diversity of sources. It was also found that the stories related to issues on a vaccine for COVID-19 were mainly straight news, with very few stories utilizing feature story format. The implication is that the media examined did not provide deeper interpretations to stories related to finding a definite and lasting solution for the virus. Straight news format usually does not provide sufficient and educating contents about an issue.

The result of the current study has extended the studies of^18,19,27 by going beyond media coverage of COVID-19 and looking how the contribution of the media in the global search for a vaccine that will be used to treat the virus. The current study has provided a new direction in the literature regarding the nexus between the media and issues related to Coronavirus disease. Additionally, the current study has extended clinical studies^28–30 that examined issues related to COVID-19 by showing how the media report medical issues related to a vaccine for COVID-19 in particular and pandemic in general.

The result of the current study also showed that media coverage differed based on the media genre. Generally, it was found that newspapers did better than TV in the area of the frequency of stories, story type as well as sources of stories. This aspect of the results has implications on social responsibility and agenda-setting theories by showing that newspapers perform their social responsibility to the society better by setting agenda on issues of public interest.^31,32 Consequently, the current study has shown that media performance of their social responsibility function through agenda setting differs according to the media genre with newspapers performing better. This understanding has provided a fresh perspective in the interpretation of both theories.

The current study has its limitations. The first limitation is that the current study did not examine the influence of media ownership on media coverage of issues related to a COVID-19 vaccine. In the second place, the current study did not examine challenges to media coverage of progress on the COVID-19 vaccine. It is expected that future studies will address these limitations.

Conclusion/Recommendations

Based on the result of the current study, it is concluded that the media in Nigeria have given the low frequency of the coverage of issues related to the development of a vaccine for COVID-19. The current study also concludes that the sources of stories on the issue were largely official while the straight news is the story type mostly used to report issues related to vaccine development. The current study has made a contribution in the literature related to studies on media coverage of COVID-19 by focusing on preventive health within the context of health communication. Additionally, the current study has made a theoretical contribution by showing that the social responsibility and agenda-setting theories can as well be interpreted within the context of the media genre involved. It is the recommendation of the current study that media Nigeria should improve on their coverage of issue related to the development of the COVID-19 vaccine. In particular, such improvements should be in the area of the frequency of coverage, story type as well as sources of stories. Further studies should be expanded to include how the media educate the general public on the need not to stigmatize those who have recovered from the virus.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Appendix A

Code sheet sample for the distribution of reports

Of media coverage of COVID-19 vaccine development

Name of media .................................

Table

S/N	Items	*	Official**	Nonofficial**	Straight news***	Feature stories***	Opinion***
1	Frequency*
2	Source**
3	Story format***

Instruction to Coders

The two coders were trained and given samples of the coding sheets and were instructed to look out for all reports on COVID-19 vaccine development in Nigeria presented as news stories, feature, and opinion stories in the selected media. They were to consider the frequency of reports, i.e. how many times stories on COVID-19 were reported; story sources; that is persons cited in the stories and format of presentation – news stories, features and opinion. Consequently, coders were instructed as shown below:

Frequency: This is the number of times that stories on vaccine development appear.

Source

1. Official sources: Sources should be considered as official if they were from people in government or corporate entities.

2. Nonofficial sources: Sources from persons who spoke in their personal capacity were regarded as nonofficial sources.

Format of stories

1. Straight news: Stories that reported issues without providing deeper details.

2. Feature news: Stories that provided deeper details on the subject of investigation.

3. Opinion: Stories report the views of individuals about the issue.